where all the flowers go
by rurounibug
Summary: a fic about old age, and memories, and saying goodbye to the ones you love...


Title: where all the flowers go [oneshot]  
  
Author: dragonflyred7  
  
Pairings: None. Gomenasai.  
  
Teaser: This is about Momoe-san, and about being old, and about memories, and about saying goodbye to the ones you love...  
  
Ratings and warnings: PG, for angst.  
  
Spoilers: No, not really. I made most of it up. Assumes basic knowledge of the series, however. You *do* know who Momoe-san *is*, right?  
  
Archive: Sure. Just email and ask, and tell me where you're putting it.  
  
Disclaimer: Weiss kruez and its characters are the property of Koyasu Takehito and project Weiss. I am making no profit from the writing of this fanfic; it is for entertainment purposes only. No infringement of copyright is intended.  
  
Here's the part where I tell you what things are:  
  
*this* is emphasis, and these are thoughts and memories, things not said aloud. There's no Schu so we won't be needing #this# for telepathy.  
  
Got it? Good. Simple and user-friendly, isn't it?  
  
  
  
########  
  
where all the flowers go  
  
by dragonflyred7  
  
She had been young once. And looking into a mirror, carefully scrutinizing herself, she could almost see the beauty of that other face, hidden now behind a mask of wrinkles and gullies and folds. She'd had long hair, then. Long and dark and flowing. The sort of hair all the other girls tried to cultivate and she had naturally. Without putting any effort into it at all. She'd had large, dark eyes, and pale skin. Eyes now dimmed with age, skin drooping. Hair gone white and thin and brittle.  
  
Looking at herself like this, she wondered if anyone else ever saw past the disguise old age had painted on her. If they ever noticed the grace of the cheekbones now prominent above sunken cheeks. If they ever saw her sweet, grandmother's smile and realized that it was the same smile that graced their own young lover's faces. If they ever looked at her and thought, she must have beautiful when she was young.  
  
But she was not that old. Not old enough, really, to look like such a decrepit thing. The world, she thought, had aged her. Her life, she thought, had sucked the years out of her the way a child sucked the sweetness out of shaved ice treats, leaving only the frozen, tasteless water. Sorrow, she thought, tended to do that to a person.  
  
She had a youth of hiding in air-raid shelters, of running through the streets in her wooden sandals and singed kimono. Sometimes she could still hear the clop clop clop of those sandals on the flagstones of the better roads. The more muted thump of them on hard-packed dirt roads. And above it all, she could hear the sirens, screaming in their language of shrieks and howls. Run for shelter, run for shelter, run for shelter, run for...  
  
She had always run. She knew other who had stopped to take food, to take important documents. Knew some who had merely shrugged and stayed where they were, drinking their tea and thinking, if I am meant to die, I will die. But she had always run, long hair streaming out behind her, someone's child under her arm. Someone's cousin clinging to her sleeve.  
  
Until finally, the cities grew too dangerous and the family had fled for the country, where it was not so cost-effective to drop bombs. Where life was not quite so cheap, but food even more costly, because the rice paddies had been burned or left untended by men gone to war.  
  
Her hands smoothed out her white hair, and she paused to look at them. No sign on them now, of that other life. Her calluses gone; no need for hard labor any more. Not with her very capable young tenants looking after her. Moving her furniture, cleaning for her. The only scratches on her hands now were those caused by the thorns of flowers, and even those had been neatly patched, and bandaged. What a fuss today's kids made over such small wounds!! She had worked days in the fields when she was young, and returned with numerous cuts ad scrapes worse than these and nothing had ever come of them!  
  
After all, the wounds that mattered most were not skin-deep. The wounds that mattered most cut to the heart.  
  
Family, lost to the unsatiable appetites of machine guns and fires and bombs. Personal treasures, traded away for food, to feed the little brother who eventually died anyway. Friends, who simply disappeared and were never heard from again. And childhood homes, flattened and burnt to the ground. Bulldozed, years later, until an office building stood on the plot of land where a younger version of herself had laughed and plucked fruit from a twisted old tree. Until a parking lot stood over the very place where her room had stood, where *she* had stood, clumsily tying her kimono as a little girl.  
  
Somewhere, at the bottom of the ocean was her brother, who had promised to bring her exotic presents from far-away lands. Who would bring for her things only a brother would think were worth risking life and limb to bring to a sister. Candies, souvenir necklaces from far away. She would have traded it all and more to have him here, alive, sitting at the table and complaining as he always had how little food there was, and really, sister, you're a horrible cook.  
  
She had another brother, forgotten somewhere, maybe tossed into a pit, a trench, the way she had seen done with the charred victims of the bombings. They had never even received a letter telling them if he was in fact dead, or missing. It was as if he had fallen off the earth. He'd received a medal for that, for disappearing. She'd have traded that honor to have him sitting here with her and her other brother, telling her, yes, you need to learn how to cook better, sister. How else are you going to feed us growing boys?  
  
She smiled into the mirror. Smiled at herself, for entertaining such fancies, and at the ghosts of her brothers, who still lingered in this world, teasing her, chiding her. Who still told her to cook better, sister, but never scorned the offerings she set out for them. At least, she liked to think they did not. After all, what did the living know of the spirit world?  
  
The spirit world was where her husband was now, long dead in an 'accident'. She would never know if it had truly been that or something more sinister. She would never know for what cause he had died. All she knew was that she had been childless when it had happened. That she had remained childless forever after.  
  
How lovely then, that the gods had graced her with grandchildren all the same?  
  
She'd had many grandchildren. Young, boisterous things, darkened by the world as her own youth had been. Fighting a war they could never speak of, that the world would never acknowledge. No one would pat these children on the shoulder and understand. That was her job. Her job to make sure they worked, ate, killed.  
  
But it did not matter, that last. The killing. She had taken lives, too, when things got desperate enough. When drunken ex-soldiers had thought a pretty young girl would be easy prey. They had learned different.  
  
So it did not matter. They were young, and she was old, but they were cast from the same coin. They had all had lives filled with promise. They had all had futures set for them, then yanked away. But she, at least, had had the chance to grow old. Many of her 'grandchildren' had not. They came bewildered and lost through her door, born again through fire or bullet or drowning into this new, dark life with nothing but a bag, maybe two, and a weapon that some of them did not even know how to use yet. And night after night they left, until one day, they simply didn't return.  
  
And then the next group of grandchildren would filter in, large eyed, lost, with a bag and a weapon, and not much more. And like an old fool, she would get attached. She would baby them, she would smile and show them how to make the flower arrangements, and bake cakes and cookies for them when they got sad or depressed. And she would worry over them until, one day, someone else walked through her door to replace them.  
  
She wondered sometimes how anyone could live a life of loss as she did and survive. She wondered how she did it, and sometimes, *why* she did. Sometimes, she just wondered. Wisdom was said to come with age, but for all her age, all her supposed wisdom, she could never understand how it was possible for a grandmother to keep outliving her grandchildren.  
  
She would never have thought that was possible.  
  
But something new was stirring now. She knew what it was. She was an old woman, and it was time to find her brothers and her parents, and all those friends who had vanished like so much mist. Time to join the phantoms.  
  
She had time still, she thought. This thing growing inside her was not growing so fast yet. It caused her no discomfort, and she was a patient woman. She had waited all these years for the ghosts to come for her. And again, she smiled for the ghosts of her brothers, so that they would not think she was afraid.  
  
When she was gone, she would miss the grandchildren she had now. She would miss their constant quarrels, and their bickering. She would miss the way they banded together, banded around her, when things got beyond their control.  
  
I had a big brother like you once, Aya. Always thinking he had to look out for me.  
  
She would miss sitting in the shop with them, sipping tea while they mussed flowers and spilled water and argued with the young girls who flocked there. So nice to see young girls laughing. Girls who had never touched and danced with death.  
  
My little brother, when he died, was younger than you, Omi. Had he grown up, I would have wanted him to be like you. Brave, and honest.  
  
But there were other children waiting for her. Children she missed dearly, whose names and faces she remembered, even if no one else did. Whose names and faces she *had* to remember, because no one else would.  
  
My second older brother was like you, Ken. He was so sweet. Such a nice boy.  
  
And she was a patient old woman. These children would one day come see her, come meet her other grandchildren, and her brothers, and her family. And their family. Their time would come, too, though not, she hoped, for a long, long time--She knew that was unlikely, but a prayer said from the heart was never wasted--and when that time came, she would see them again. No goodbye was ever *for*ever.  
  
And you, Youji. What will I ever do with you? How will you ever get a wife, behaving like that?  
  
Wife?  
  
She had been young once, and beautiful, but she was an old woman, now. Old and wrinkled and fragile, and sick. And these children were young and strong, maybe the strongest she had ever cared for. They might make it. She hoped they would. She hoped they would be all right without her. Hoped they would remember to water the plants and do the laundry.  
  
She hoped they would remind Omi to do his schoolwork, and remind Youji to go bed at night and wake up in the morning. Hoped they would remind Aya to come downstairs for dinner and remind Ken not to go out without a coat. Because for once she thought, she would do things right.  
  
Finally, she thought, it would not be her mourning. She would not, this time, out live her grandchildren. This time, the mourners would not shake their heads and say regretfully, they were so young. So young. What a waste. This time they would smile and say, she was an old lady. We'll miss her, but she had a long life. She was tired, and now she is with those brothers she missed so dearly.  
  
Her life had been long, and it had been hard. Her life had sucked the youth out of her. But it had been a good life, she thought. She had regrets, but she had sweet memories, too. She had done what she could with what the gods had given her, and there could be no regret in that, despite what she might have wished for herself.  
  
One last time, she smiled at her reflection, then got stiffly to her feet, unfolding from her kneeling position. She shuffled as she walked, not the shuffle of young girls in wooden sandals and tight kimonos, but of old women in house slippers. Trailing behind her, was her cat. Not the silky longhaired cats of pretty young ladies, but a shorthaired, fat thing. The sort of cat old ladies with allergies and arthritic fingers kept. Arthritic finger could not brush long, silky cat hair very well.  
  
She paused to scoop up the feline, to hold it close and tell it the boys would look after it when she was gone. And it purred for her, rumbling against her shrunken chest. And through her thick glasses, she smiled down at it. Unless something awful happened, she would not out live her grandchildren.  
  
A grandmother should never outlive her children.  
  
If they were still alive and arguing amongst themselves when her time came, she would be happy. If they lived on, she could join the ghosts in peace. She would be, she thought, a spirit who would always protect them.  
  
And when their time came, she would be waiting with their families and ancestors and loved ones.  
  
After all, no goodbye was forever.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
~owari  
  
  
  
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Where have all the flowers gone?  
  
Long time passing...  
  
Picked by children every one  
  
Long time passing...  
  
Where have all the young girls gone?  
  
Long time passing....  
  
I think that's how the song goes.  
  
Please C&C. Onegai?  
  
--bart,  
  
goes off to cry... =..( 


End file.
